Las Vegas Sports Market Is A Whirlwind, But There’s Always Steady National Finals Rodeo For Time Machine Experience
By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
You know, the sports industry in Las Vegas has been moving as fast as the cars zipping around the 215 beltway ever since LVSportsBiz.com was conceived in June 2017.
There were the birth of the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017, the rebranding of the Las Vegas Aces in 2018, the new Las Vegas Aviators baseball park in 2019 and the opening of the Raiders stadium, complete with NFL team in 2020 and construction of a new arena moving along in Henderson in 2021.
But whenever I think about the sports world in Sin City moving a tad to quickly around comes the good ol’ stable reliable, the National Finals Rodeo to Thomas & Mack Center with its seven rodeo categories and 15 contestants vying for a gold buckle in each category.
Evert December, the folks who still live by the country’s Old West culture and lifestyle come calling to Las Vegas, filling up South Point and packing the UNLV arena to the tune of nearly 17,000 strong a night for 10 days. Las Vegas Events President Pat Christenson, the LVCVA public tourism agency point man for NFR, said 95 percent of the cowboy and horse fans inside Thomas & Mack Arena were out-of-towners.
It hurt Christenson to see NFR hightail it to Texas from Las Vegas in 2020 because our market’s COVID-19 restrictions were just too much for the rodeo’s sanctioning body, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA), to bear.
“It was hard sitting it out,” Christenson told LVSportsBiz.com before the NFR show started tonight. “I’m not a guy who likes to sit on the bench.”
It’s back to the future for Las Vegas during NFR’s stay here because this gambling mecca and fast-growing sports market is a horse town at its roots.
And if you thought many fans at Golden Knights hockey games blow off the local indoor mask mandate at T-Mobile Arena, you should have seen the scene at NFR’s first night at Thomas & Mack Center two miles away.
The mask mandate is in effect at the 10-day national rodeo championships. But this being a hard core country and western event, let’s just say the boots, cowboy hats and buckles outnumbered the masks by plenty.
In case you’re wondering, Clark County showed a COVID positivity rate of 6.8 percent, while statewide Nevada was at 7.2 percent.
Not much has changed for NFR over the years. COVID, Schmovid — nothing will stop the rodeo. There are small changes like the daily NFR event starts at 5:45 PM instead of 6:45 PM to comply with the wishes of NFR’s broadcast rights holder, Cowboy Channel. The Cowboy Channel took over the broadcast rights last year, taking over from the CBS Sports Network.
And NFR really went crazy by hooking up with Blue Man Group to promote the rodeo.
For the record, the attendance count was 16,804 Thursday.
And just so you now, another 16,800 rodeo fans will be at the arena Friday night and every night for another eight days after tomorrow.
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